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Mapping Processes and Practices (Workshop – July 2nd, 2011 – Paris)

In their article Rethinking Maps, Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge (2007, 331) argue that cartography should be envisioned as “a processual, rather than representational, science.” This process-oriented perspective challenges conventions in cartography, but also reflects more common mapping practices in other disciplines. In the arts and humanities the term mapping is used more broadly and includes a diversity of practices and expectations. Artists and other creative practitioners have developed their own mapping practices to express understandings, fears, hopes, emotions and perceptions about places and people. Approaching mapping as a process and set of practices raises a range of issues:

How do mapping processes and practices vary across disciplines?

What are the consequences of deploying different ways of mapping to portray the world?

What politics are facilitated by mapping practice?

What ethical possibilities flow from a processual approach to mapping?

How might aesthetics and function respond to change?

What roles do technologies play in mapping practice?

How is meaning constituted through mapping action?

What is the affect and emotional consequence of an ontogenic approach to mapping?

What are the relations of embodied actions to mapping?

What are the social consequences of mapping practice?

To address these questions the Commission on Maps and Society of the International Cartographic Association (ICA), in collaboration with the Working Group on Arts and Cartography of the ICA, are organizing a one day workshop in Paris (just before the 25th International Cartographic Conference). This workshop aims to bring together researchers, students, practitioners and artists interested in the processes and practices through which they make, enact and study mapping.

Given the topic of this workshop we are seeking reports on work in progress, rather than finished papers and invite abstracts around any of the above questions.